Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/267

 out and coming in, seek the judgment of your people about them, and, when there is a general agreement, exert your own powers of reflection. When you have any good plans or counsels, enter and lay them before your sovereign in the palace. Thereafter, when you are acting abroad in accordance with them, say, "This plan or this view is all due to our sovereign." Oh! if all ministers were to act thus, how excellent would they be, and how distinguished!'

The king said, 'Kün-khăn, do you give their full development to the great lessons of the duke of Kâu. Do not make use of your power to exercise oppression; do not make use of the laws to practise extortion. Be gentle, but with strictness of rule. Promote harmony by the display of an easy forbearance.

'When any of the people of Yin are amenable to punishment, if I say "Punish," do not you therefore punish; and if I say "Spare," do not you therefore spare. Seek the due middle course. Those who are disobedient to your government, and uninfluenced by your instructions, you will punish, remembering that the end of punishment is to make an end of punishing. Those who are inured to villainy and treachery, those who violate the regular duties of society, and those who introduce disorder into the public manners:—those three classes you will not spare, though their particular offences be but small.

'Do not cherish anger against the obstinate, and dislike them. Seek not every quality in one individual. You must have patience, and you will be successful; have forbearance, and your virtue will